Forget football — Ohio State students spend break volunteering with Habitat for Humanity

By Rosemarie Dowell

Correspondent|

Jan 16, 2015 | 6:01 PM

Morgan Cooley, left, David Abood, Jordan Williams, and Janeane Schroeder, front, install sod at a Habitat home on Tuesday, January 6, 2014. Students from Ohio State University spent their winter break volunteering at a Habitat for Humanity of Lake and Sumter construction site. The students are taking part in the Habitat for Humanity's Collegiate Challenge (Tom Benitez/Orlando Sentinel. (Tom Benitez, Orlando Sentinel)

Not every Ohio State University student spent the week leading up to its Monday night's football national championship came against Oregon engrossed in all the media hype.

More than a dozen spent it laboring in the rundown neighborhood of Skyline Hills in Lady Lake volunteering as part of Habitat for Humanity's annual Collegiate Challenge and had little time, if any, to worry about the big game, which the Buckeyes won 42-20.

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"We're more than a football team," said Janeane Schroeder, a junior at Ohio State who led a group of other undergraduates who were working on a Summit Drive home, a project of Habitat for Humanity of Lake-Sumter. "We care about communities and the people who live in them."

The group put down sod, a tough, gritty assignment for students not accustomed to manual labor.

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"It's been very humbling and very fulfilling," she said. "But I'm already exhausted: it's back-breaking work."

Sophomore David Agood said volunteering in the working-class area has been an eye opening, blister-inducing experience for him. He and the others signed up for the build last week through Ohio State's Buck-I-Serv service program, which encourages student volunteerism during spring and winter breaks.

"It's made me realize how fortunate I am," Agood said. "If you only hang around your friends, you might never get to see how others struggle."

'Tired and dirty'

Several other students from the college worked on another tin-roofed cottage-style home on Longview Drive, including junior Reena Underiner, who organized the trip, along with Schroeder.

"It's great to help people out," she said. "We feel lucky to be here in a warm climate because other students are spending their break volunteering in places like New Hampshire."

The homes are two of six planned for the community, part of a neighborhood revitalization project that began in early 2014, said Carlos Beron, Habitat volunteer coordinator.

A Chuck Street home, which a group of college students from Nova Scotia worked on earlier this year, has been completed.

"We appreciate their hard work," said Beron, who previously worked for a Habitat affiliate in Miami before moving to Lake a year and a half ago. Some students from the University of California at Berkeley spent the week working on a home on Hampton Road in Leesburg, behind the post office, he said.

All the students stayed at Habitat of Lake-Sumter's Domestic Global Villages in Eustis, which was created to house volunteer tourists and features spacious living quarters as well as a game and computer room.

"We're so tired and dirty by the end of the day, all we want to do is take a shower and watch some TV," Schroeder said.